Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who dearly loved to play golf. She was an honorable young lady who meticulously followed the rules of the game. If she hit the ball out of bounds, she always counted her penalty strokes, even though it made her very sad to do so.
One day the princess was playing golf with her favorite golf ball. It was made of solid gold….kind of heavy, but very pretty. On one particular hole, she sliced it badly off the tee and the ball rolled and rolled until it came to a pond, into which it fell with a splash. Kneeling by the side of the pond, she tried to find her ball. But the water was murky, dark and deep. And when she realized it was gone, she cried.
While she was crying, a homely, squatty, little frog popped its head out of the water and peered at her. Now the princess thought frogs were disgusting little animals, and when she saw him looking up at her, she gave a little shudder and glared at him with distain. But much to her surprise, the frog looked up and said:
Madam, please don’t ever wince
When you’re viewing a little frog, since
You can never be sure
If the one you abhor
Was previously tadpole or prince.
The princess was much taken aback by this odd little creature and more than a little intrigued by his comment about the prince. They struck up a conversation, with the frog expressing curiosity as to why she was crying. The princess explained how her favorite golf ball had entered the pond as the result of an errant tee shot. Then she asked whether the frog could possibly retrieve the ball of which she was so fond. Said the frog:
Yes, I will gladly assist
In retrieving your ball, sorely missed. In return for the favor I surely would savor
To be, by a sweet princess, kissed.
Well, the princess was pretty sure she was not going to kiss the frog. But she agreed when he promised to get her ball back. Whereupon the frog swam to the bottom of the pond, brought her golden ball to the surface, laid it in the grass and puckered up for his reward. Except that, once again, the princess burst into tears.
Confused, the frog questioned her unexpected behavior. She explained that while she was happy that her favorite golf ball had been recovered, she was now very sad about the stroke she would have to record as the result of her bad shot. The frog suggested that if she was that upset about the stroke, the solution was to not count it.
The princess was shocked at such a thought, explaining that she had never taken a stroke without accounting for it in her score. The frog rolled his rather bulbous eyes and said:
To pretty princesses I am partial,
And since your ball has now entered my marsh, I’ll
Give some handy advice.
If your drive be a slice,
Don’t score it, just call it reh’arsal.
The princess made one of those sounds that people make when they are thoroughly disgusted and then walked away. But as she was leaving, she quietly wondered how many strokes she would save, were she to follow the advice of the frog. Those penalty strokes add up, you know.
Which is when the frog, as if reading her mind, followed her and said:
If you hit the ball out of the yard
But you don’t want your score to be marred,
You have my permission
To make the omission
And not put it down on your card.
Little by little, she became converted to his way of thinking. What difference would it make if she ignored a few bad shots? After all, it’s only a game. Right?
One day the princess arrived at the pond and announced to the frog that she had come to the same conclusion as he. No longer would she count any penalty strokes for bad hits off tees. In fact, she was even thinking about eliminating all strokes from her score except the strokes she really liked. That said, she leaned down and gave the frog a kiss. As she kissed him, there was a big POOF, accompanied by a flash of light and cloud of smoke.
When the smoke cleared away, the princess uncovered her eyes. And standing right in front of her, where there had once been a homely, squatty, little frog, she now saw….a homely, squatty, little man. He was shabbily dressed and carried a set of old-fashioned golf clubs over his shoulder. Rubbing her eyes in disbelief, the princess asked: “Who are you?” And the homely, squatty, little man replied:
I’m a world-famous golfer named Mulligan
And I’m given to hitting me ball again.
If me tee shot, I skew it,
I up and redo it,
And while at it, I may hit ’em all again.
Well, the princess and Mulligan fell madly in love and were soon married. They shared many things in common, among them their total disregard for the rules of golf. They lived happily ever after and played to very low, but wildly inaccurate handicaps.
* * * * *
Given the presence of golfers and golf lovers in our community for the Ryder Cup, I thought I would begin with Jim Corbett’s tongue-in-cheek explanation of how mulligans came to be. Truth be told, no one really knows. Although, depending upon how many pints they have had before you approach them, you’ll meet all kinds of people who think they know. I say “pints,” because the “mulligan” is clearly Irish, and most of the stories that connect mulligans to golf involve free bottles of spirits in predominantly Irish saloons. But when applied to golf, a mulligan is a “do over,” a “freebie,” a “form of legitimized cheating” or, as someone said: “You gotta love a sport where no one minds if you take an unrecorded shot or two.”
Wednesday afternoon, on the sixth tee at Oakland Hills, Davis Love III teed it up, hooked it wildly, and might have creamed some unsuspecting spectator had not several of us yelled “Fore!” Well, not all of us yelled “Fore.” One guy, just a few feet to my right, yelled, “Mulligan.” So Davis teed it up and hit another. Meaning that even the pros do it. In practice, that is. So who cares?
The game of golf has more rules than all-but-the-purists can master. So average blokes like me have been known to bend them….the most acceptable form of bending being the mulligan. Simply put, if your very first shot of the day (on your very first hole of the day) is a bad one, you can hit a second one. It’s why you never go to the first tee without a back-up ball in your pocket.
Customarily, there is only one mulligan per round. Although I like to play with people who give a second….or back-nine mulligan. Even better is a carry-over mulligan….meaning that if (on my first) I scorch it, I can bank it for when I need it. And they tell me that at charity golf tournaments, if you bring enough money with you, you can buy mulligans. But there are those who claim that, if you bring enough money with you, you can buy your way around other rules that have nothing to do with golf.
Sometimes mulligans are singled out for special people on the golf course. The president gets a mulligan. Your father-in-law gets a mulligan. As should your customers and your clergy. Speaking personally, if you give them, I’ll take them. Because I need them. When I go to the course (which is not often), I get my money’s worth. But I like the game because it combines three memories from my childhood. I am talking about taking long walks….hitting things with a stick….and doing poorly at math.
But back to mulligans, which, in their pure form (if mulligans can be said to have a pure form) are really second chances. Which all of us need from time to time. And some of us get.
Every Friday, Bess Hock (my fifth grade teacher) had a spelling bee. Which began with the entire class standing around the perimeter of the room. But as soon as you missed one letter of one word, you had to sit. And while I wanted to win, my first goal was to stay standing….avoiding sitting early. Because once down, there was no way up. You couldn’t get back in the bee….at least till next Friday.
As a kid, Dick Cheatham hated spelling bees. That’s because Dick had a speech impediment, so much so that he occasionally spelled his first word wrong on purpose so that he could sit down and avoid additional embarrassment. But thanks to teachers of speech who retrained his mind…. and clarinet playing (of all things) that realigned his mouth….Dick got a second chance. Dick knew he had come full circle when he was invited to serve as the “pronouncer” for the regional spelling bee of Livingston County, given that they couldn’t find anyone who enunciated more clearly than he.
But Bess Hock taught me a good lesson. Life doesn’t always give second chances. Not every score comes with grace notes. I was talking about this the other day with John Kreitz. John is white water rafting this weekend, having scaled his recreational activities down from sky diving once he took up fathering. Said John: “Nobody ever gets a second chance to make a first impression.” Which is true. All of us can remember some social faux pas where, when we most needed to “do it,” we “blew it.” But such mistakes seldom prove fatal….unlike mistakes in sky diving (or bungee jumping) where one miscalculation ends it all.
Talking with others about cardiology….which is suddenly of great interest to me….I realize that medicine gives second chances to some in the form of warnings. But not to all. Health-related mulligans are anything but universal. For some, the first shot fired across the bow is a warning shot. But for others, the first shot fired across the bow is a fatal shot. Leading some to conclude that life is not fair….followed closely by its corollary that God is not good.
But in other arenas of life, ours is a gospel of second chances….a faith filled-to-overflowing with mulligans. “Tee it up and hit it over,” God seems to be saying to his creation. You may not be able to start fresh. But you can start again. Sure, sin scars. But thanks to the balm in Gilead, even the wounded can be made whole.
Which brings us to this text about this woman. About which some revealing and intimate details are known, but whose name is not known. Caught in the act of adultery, she was. Leading me to a pair of questions. First, how did they catch her? The text seems to be very clear that she was apprehended “in the very act.” Now I don’t have a lot of experience in this area. Meaning that some of you will have to help me here. But don’t most adulterers shut the blinds….draw the curtains….close the drapes….register under assumed names? The scribes and the Pharisees must have been looking pretty hard for such as she.
Second, where was the guy? I could be wrong, but isn’t adultery a two-person tango? If they caught her, wasn’t there a him? If so, where is he?
Stoning is the suggested punishment. You’ve heard the story. You know the story. Personally, I can’t imagine it. But taking their authority from the law of Moses, hardliners did it. And as best as I can research, stoning often involved placing the accused in a hole (standing)….then filling the hole with dirt, so that only the head of the accused was above ground. Those holding stones then threw at the head.
Except nobody in this story threw. Because Jesus said (in effect): “Why don’t you guys get yourselves organized? One way would be to line up to throw, putting the sinless ones at the front of the line. Let them throw first.” But starting with the oldest, they dropped their stones and went away. Apparently, honesty was born of memory. So Jesus said to the lady: “Look, lady, they haven’t condemned you. I’m not condemning you. Don’t do it again.”
Everybody knows this story. But what nobody knows is that this is a story which, itself, was given a second chance. In the Bible on my desk at home, this story is printed in italics at the bottom of the page. Depending on the Bible you read, you can sometimes find it at the end of John’s eighth chapter or the beginning of John’s eighth chapter. Nobody is quite certain where it goes. Because nobody’s quite certain where it was. There are tons of questions concerning authorship and placement. Let me explain.
The older the manuscripts of the New Testament are, the more valuable they are. We base our present text of the New Testament on the earliest manuscripts available. They date from the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D. William Barclay suggests that there are seven such manuscripts from this period. The fact is, this story occurs in but one of those seven manuscripts….and that one, not one of the best. The other six omit it completely. Two, however, leave a blank space where it might have been.
The question fascinates historians and scholars. And while I could rehearse the debate, I see no reason to do it here. This much I will venture. The issue is not that the story was added later, but that it was removed earlier.
Removed why? Saint Augustine gives us a clue when he uses the phrase “to avoid scandal,” suggesting that if Jesus did this, he shouldn’t have. And we shouldn’t be talking about it. “After all, we live among pagans. They do such things. We do not do such things. But we might be tempted to do such things if stories remain in the scriptures that suggest ‘softness’ on the part of Jesus concerning such things.”
The story found its way back in….at least in a few manuscripts….most likely as a way of countering early bishops of the church who were perceived as being too strict and judgmental. Which may have been the first time….but certainly not the last time….when a word from the Lord of the church was introduced to soften the hardliners in the church.
The part of the story that is missing is what happened next. To the woman, I mean. After her reprieve, I mean. For the only thing sadder than a church that fails to give mulligans is a sinner who fails to take them. And constructively use them.
I have noticed something about mulligans over the years. Given the gift of a second chance, many golfers hit a shot that is worse than the first. In part, because they can’t get over and beyond the first. Which turns the mulligan of new opportunity into the rehearsal of a bad memory.
Scott Peck (of The Road Less Traveled fame) admits that he used to be undone by the memory of prior faults and failures, that is until an experience on a golf course changed his life.
I was paired as a twosome with a man my own age….a superb golfer with a single-digit handicap. He was also a gentleman, literally and metaphorically. He taught me several things about golf that day. But the most valuable was on the 15th hole when he noticed I was depressed after a triple bogey on the previous hole and, as a result, continued to play poorly. “You know,” he commented mildly, “we have an expression in golf: ‘One hole at a time’.”
A light bulb went on for Peck. Just like the famed Alcoholic’s Anonymous slogan, “One day at a time,” it had to be true that the way to approach golf was “one hole at a time.” In other words, don’t become obsessed with the past. Don’t become paralyzed by concerns about perfection or imperfection. Unburden yourself. Forgive yourself. Love your imperfect self in the same way that God loves your imperfect self. Play the game of life one hole at a time. Or, as I wrote in our order of worship several weeks ago: “The purpose of forgiveness is not to make you feel good about your past. The purpose of forgiveness is to give you back your future.”
And for those of you who recoil against the notion that truths from a golf course and truths of the Spirit should ever be linked in a sermon, kindly allow me to close with Lee Trevino’s oft-quoted line, suggesting that there are only two things in life you should always do with your head down. Play golf and pray.
Note: For those reading this sermon beyond the area of Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, let the record show that this was Ryder Cup Week in our area. Some churches actually closed their doors, took the Sunday off, and rented their parking lots to the PGA. So a sermon that included golf in its imagery proved timely.
As concerns Dick Cheatham, he is a most eloquent preacher who serves First Church (part-time) as a retired pastor. The reference to Dick’s clarinet playing reflects the fact that, when in Birmingham, he often plays innovative jazz preludes with our organist, Doris Hall.
Jim Corbett’s wonderful musing about mulligans was found on the Internet. I adapted it for personal use, retaining its flavor but shortenings its length. The quote from Scott Peck can be found in The Road Less Traveled.
Finally, the discussion of the woman taken in adultery can be found in any scholarly commentary. Theories abound as concerns its omission from early texts. For a concise description of the problem, see William Barclay’s commentary on John’s Gospel (Volume 2).
